The Ledger

13.24 Smoke

In this episode (13.24), a famous comedian/movie star is investigated after his adopted baby falls to his death after being dangled out a hotel window during a fire. The investigation leads to evidence of a conspiracy by the comedian to commit child abuse, abuse which in one case occurred at least 5 years ago. Briscoe and Green uncover the conspiracy, and McCoy and Southerlyn figure out how to prosecute it.

The episode begins at the scene of the fire, out on the street looking up at it. A crowd has gathered, and a woman says audibly, "I heard he fell out of Monty's window." Briscoe and Green show up to learn the details, and find that the victim in the case is a baby, DOA, who apparently fell from the winow during the fire. Dialogue between Green and others indicates that "Monty" is Monty Bender, a rich and famous comic who also has a film career.

The detectives visit the scene, and there is some evidence that it was arson: the fire alarms were turned off, some things just don't add up, and the cause seems to be a cigarette tossed into a wastepaper basket. They learn that Monty was dangling the kid out the window, supposedly to keep him away from the smoke. They learn that Monty's nutritionist and stylist were also in the room at the time of the fire.

The talk to the Fred the nutrionist and Birgit, the stylist. Both of them have very similar stories, even down to the words they use to describe it. They both mention that the smoke was like a "fog." This catches the detectives' attention, and they figure there is more to this than meets the eye.

They visit Monty in the hospital, who doesn't reveal much beside the fact that the baby was adopted a year ago. They talk to the manager of the hotel, who is much more informative. He says Monty moved in a year ago and is a good tenant. He says that Monty gets frequent visits from his masseur, Harvey, and that Harvey is gay, so maybe Monty is, too. They bring Harvey in for questioning at the precinct, and he is nervous. While they're questioning, he says something like "I never did anything...I never touched those kids," which is the first indication the detectives have that Monty was involved in something beside this fire.

Green gets Harvey to explain everything from the beginning. Harvey says Monty bought an ice cream truck which Harvey would drive around while Monty would peer out through holes in the side. When he saw kids he liked, he would signal Harvey who would get out and talk to the kids parents and invite the parents and the kid up to Monty's estate in the Berkshires. At the estate, Harvey says, Monty would "play" with the kids.

The detectives talk over the case, and AVB says something dumb like, "They say to know a comedian you have to be a comedian." So they go and talk to Larry Miller, another comedian, who says he only knows Monty distantly -- they shared a few drinks many, many years ago. SO WHY ARE THEY TALKING TO HIM?? God, this is terrible writing. At least Larry is funny. Anyway, Larry says he heard rumors that Monty was involved in a sex abuse case a few years back and he settled it for "seven figures."

They check out Monty's financial records and find payments to a Mr Mireles for $1 million, and subsequent payments for $500K each. They visit Mr Mireles, who says he gets paid because he wrote Monty's second picture, "The Wicked Stepson." They learn that Mr Mireles has two kids: one who is young and ill, and another, Sammy, who is 17 and a freshman at Hudson University.

They talk to Sammy, and he is evasive, even though Green tries to win him over (or something) by accessing the internet wirelessly on Sammy's laptop. (More wasted dialogue and action!) Sammy says he rarely talks to his parents, prompting Briscoe to say that his daughter "calls me all the time to tell me how much I screwed up her life."

The ME calls and says she wants to talk about the baby. They visit her and she says the baby had no smoke in its lungs: it was dead before the fire. (This sounds awfully significant, except the writer of the episode never bothered to tie up this thread later on: Monty is not held accountable for the death of this baby.)

They talk to the stylist again to find out how the baby died, but she doesn't roll on Monty, apparently b/c he's paying her a lot of money. Meanwhile, Green says he Googled "Sammy Mineles" and found a deposition from Sammy on a site called upyourbutt.net, which is very similar to The Smoking Gun, which publishes various legal documents. The deposition says that Monty abused him by performing oral sex on him. They use this evidence to arrest Monty (27 mins).

Bail is set at $1 million by the growly judge, who tells him that "ten of those dollars are mine," meaning that he went to see one of Monty's movies. The ADAs discuss the case with Monty's lawyer, recurring character James Granick, who moves for dismissal because the deposition is not admissible, since it should have been sealed. The judge agrees and the case is dismissed.

They decide to charge the Mireles's with conspiracy to commit sex abuse since they continue to accept payments from Monty. The detectives arrest the Mireles's (37 mins) -- I don't know how they expect to make this stick, given that the only evidence they have is still that deposition, which had just been tossed. McCoy says that since the civil case the deposition didn't involve the Mireles's directly.

So guess who the Mireles's get to represent them? That's right! Monty's lawyer, Granick. Mrs Mireles explains that she took the money from Monty because they're younger son was sick (deformed heart) and they couldn't afford to pay for his operations. Well, MAYBE IF THEY HAD GONE THROUGH WITH THEIR LAWSUIT they could have gotten that money, too. The DAs confer, during which Southerlyn says she's the only one in the room who doesn't have kids.

The Mireles's go on trial for conspiracy to commit sex abuse, which wasn't really supposed to happen: McCoy was just trying to pressure them to testify against Monty. Regardless, Harvey testifies about the ice cream truck, and says that Sammy was one of the kids recruited through that operation. Mrs Mireles testifies and says that her son told her that Monty touched him and that he didn't like Monty anmore. Sammy testifies and says he made up the whole story, though McCoy thinks he's just saying this b/c he doesn't want his parents to go to jail. Sammy mentions that the abuse occurred on Labor Day weekend, which makes McCoy stop and think, and then ask for a recess. He reviews the evidence, and realizes that Monty's first $1M check to Mireles was written on August 27 -- the week before Labor Day. This suggests that the Mireles's pimped their son to Monty, since they received payment in advance of the visit. Yuck.

McCoy calls everyone into the Family Conference Room, and tells Sammy what he's discovered. Sammy realizes that his parents pimped him and freaks out. He says, "You sold me," and then asks to "testify again," although he means he wants to merely continue his testimony. Back at trial, he does, and says that Monty "did oral sex to me. After that, we had ice cream." He also says of his mom, who -- let's not forget -- is the defendant: "She knew! She knew!" and yet Granick doesn't object, although this sort of statement is not really allowed, ssince he is both testifying that his mom is guilty of something that hasn't been proved, and also he is stating what's going in her mind.

The verdict comes back: Guilty of conspiracy to commit sex abuse.

Back at the DAs office, Serena tells everyone that Monty has been arrested and was remanded. She gives Jack a strange look, and their subsequent dialogue reveals that SS thinks they went too hard on the Mireles's. GIVE ME A BREAK, SERENA. What are you, the new Nora Lewin?? She's sympathetic, she says, because they were just trying to save their younger, ill son. For crying out loud, aren't there better ways to do that than pimping your other son?

The episode holds your interest, because you keep waiting to find out the rest of the story, but it suffers from several major flaws, including the fact that you never see Monty on trial, and the case with which the episode opened -- the dead baby -- is never adequately resolved. On top of these problems, there are several other smaller ones, such as Serena's inexplicable sympathy, several wasted scenes, and a lot of improbabilities (famous movie star gazes at kids while crouched in custom-fitted ice cream truck? Come on!).

As far as character background goes, we get confirmation of some things that we may have heard before: Briscoe must have two daughters, since one of them was killed a few seasons earlier; McCoy has a daughter (also discussed in a previous episode); Southerlyn has no kids (we could have guessed that one); and Branch has at least one kid.

As is obvious from this summary, the episode contains many parallels to the Michael Jackson case, who also dangled his child out the window of a hotel, apparently abused kids, and had a deposition about such abuse leaked to the internet.

The most interesting thing about the episode is that the comedian Larry Miller appears as himself! What makes this particularly odd is that he has appeared in two other episodes (Coma and Encore) as a character named Michael Dobson. There have been tons of times when L&O gets the same actor to play different characters, but I believe Larry is the only one who has played himself and another character.

Posted by adm at June 12, 2004 11:13 PM

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